Who contains the right level of pre-mixed internal vitriol combined with a deep and obsessive love for MAD MAX FURY ROAD that can pre-write the post Academy Awards night review, eviscerating the voters for overlooking MMFR in the voting?
We know it’s going to happen. None of the characters are dying of a terminal disease in MMFR while simultaneously heavily emoting and talking constantly about how they feel about it as it’s happening in front of our eyes.
Most of the older voters will not have seen the film and, those that did, will have missed 90% of what has been so awesomely illuminated here in these Tumblr posts. (Can we provide mandatory cliff notes?)
Like Hollywood obituaries, which often get written months in advance of any aging star’s death, I think the drafting of this outraged-post can be started now.
I just wanted to mention it, because someone here is going to watch the awards being handed out to some very obviously pretentious middle of the road films and their heads WILL…
OMG ROFLMAO aaa ha ha ha ha haaa! Damn Mister Chris, okay, I’ll start preparing my rant in advance :D
MEANWHILE? GET PRINTING ON THOSE MANDATORY CLIFF’S NOTES. bonehandledknife‘S FILM THEORY POSTS WILL BE VITAL - PRINT THEM ALLL!
LMAO UM WHAT BUT ALSO SURE GO AHEAD WITH THE PRINTING.
I don’t think I have the pre-mixed internal vitrol necessary though for the post-Academy awards review. Mostly I’m just rolling about in a ball of yay over this film. I *have* seen a larger cross-section of people love this film than I expected and hope that when the ‘voting’ DVDs arrive for the voters that they actually sit down and fucking watch the movie.
Because if they can understand film/visual language at all, that’s about all it should take.
But I suppose that’s being optimistic about people.
I know I’m not the only one to look at this scene and think to myself, “I wonder who’s job it is to to roto Theron’s spit?”
Moreover, how many takes did that take??
One thing I was thinking about during this is that there’s more spitting in faces or at objects (the chastity belt) than you see in films normally. Made me wonder if in this world spitting at someone is like the ultimate insult because water is so scarce. As if to say that they hate them so much it’s worth losing this bit of water to insult them.
Lately the concept of “Good Guy Ace” has come up in discussion.
The Ace is a good guy. He works hard; he is diligent, professional, and respectful. He is extremely skilled and competent (competency porn! What a great term!). He seems like the kind of man we would want to know in our own lives; he could be easily someone’s father, uncle, grandfather… The Ace is an older man secure in his strength and abilities; a man who sees people for what they can accomplish and thus does not resent a woman’s leadership, a man who lives the meritocracy he believes.
The Ace is compassionate and caring; he is concerned when Furiosa is cold to him, he bows deepest at Morsov’s death (in contrast to Slit who mocks Morsov’s sacrifice). He is intensely loyal; he shields Furiosa from Nux’s sawed-off shotgun (and Nux in turn is unwilling to shoot a fellow War Boy out of hand). And as aforementioned, the Ace is not the kind of man who would be sitting in the back of the War Rig with the other War Boys, saying, “Women drivers, amirite?” These values make him a good man in our world, and as far as we’re concerned, in any world.
But the Ace, no matter how much of a good guy he is, is still complicit in the system of the Citadel, an oppressive system with a foundation in dehumanization. He is trusted with protecting valuable commodities. The War Boys are literally giving their lives for commodities, because in this world, those things have more value than their labor or even their lives. The Ace also appears as one of the most pious; he bows his head the lowest when saluting Immortan Joe, and again when he Witnesses Morsov.
Uncritically, the Ace has no idea that the accumulation of these actions mean that he implicitly supports an oppressive system that strips him of individuality, adulthood, self-determination, and even procreation. After all, those chastity belts are meant to hurt people on both sides of the iron. As intensely manly as the War Boys are, they are essentially eunuchs, drones, interchangeable parts no more individual that a factory-produced bolt, emasculated by a cult of toxic masculinity. Immortan Joe doesn’t just control the water and with it their lives; he controls all the means of production too, even the reproduction of human beings.
So how do we know for sure that the Ace is complicit in the system? After all in a fiercely male-dominated, patriarchal world, he trusts Furioa and she trusts him in return. It is obvious they have experience working side-by-side. They move as a well-rehearsed team and know each other’s minds. But when Furiosa betrays their system, the Ace takes her by the throat. This is not the action of a man who is good in the context of our world; this is the brutal action of a man who is good in the context of their world. A man who is protecting the assets at the cost of friendship and mutual respect, profit above all else. Even though we know the Ace doesn’t necessarily think “profit before friends”, by attacking Furiosa and doing what he thinks is responsible, he is supporting that toxic worldview.
As much as we love the Ace, the Ace is sick like the rest of the War Boys, not only physically, and unable to see it. He has not had his eyes opened by the Splendid Angharad as Furiosa and the other Wives had. He’s carved out a little bit of goodness in an ugly world, but the Ace, like everyone else, is a product of his environment and the system they live in. It doesn’t stop him from being a good guy; it’s just that in their world, no one’s hands are clean. Everyone is complicit, no matter how good they are and how much one wants to like them. This best example is the Keeper of the Seeds, whose last planted seed is an Anti-Seed, a rifle bullet, in Furiosa’s assailant’s eye. Even she whose mission is to give life to the wasteland is a killer, many times over, and mostly unapologetic about that, though her seeds are a chance to redeem herself.
It is important to judge characters and people by the context of their world and their society, not ours.
So in sum: Ace is a good guy. Hell, even a great guy, in the context of his world. We still love him. But one may not want him over for dinner.
I agree with…most of this. But as a former soldier, I’d like to slap down some ethos here, and, in fact, as an interrogator, I have to say, you probably wouldn’t want to have ME over for dinner, either. ^_^
I’d like to point out that it’s clear the Furiosa is ALSO complicit in this system? She likely didn’t get her rank by being nice or even rebellious. She got Joe’s trust by, uh, playing the game. In fact, if you take it that she knowingly played the game in order to serve her own ends, it makes her, in a sense, morally WORSE than Ace or any of the War Boys, because she knowingly used/manipulated them. She claims agency and her first act of agency is betrayal. And that she must have done things she did not quite square with either. He might have a misguided or misaimed honor, but she is seriously crippled in the integrity department.
I’d like to also point out that fighting in an army does not mean 100000000% supporting the ideology of that army. A little research into the ‘comitatus’ would probably do some good here–military units coalesce around a homosocial code, so you tend to fight for your guys, rather than for that abstract idea. In other words, when I was in a firefight, I wasn’t like YO BALD EAGLES FREEEEDDDDDOOOM, or even YAY PRESIDENT, I was like, SHIT they’ve got Smitty pinned down. When someone betrays you in that system, FUCK YEAH you take it personally. Ask Bowe Bergdahl’s old unit how they feel about him. Be prepared for profanity.
When you live close to death (which most people who can fart around on Tumblr probably don’t) you DESPERATELY want meaning. You desperately want to believe that there’s some sense or logic–if not in a sort of ‘magical thinking’ ritual you follow, then at least in the sense that when you do lose your buddies, you want to believe that it was…for something, or that they went some place other than a plastic bag. Because if you can’t…it crushes you.
Think how much death Ace has seen. That might explain his faith.
Ace is really clearly the very common war movie trope called the ‘Immortal Sergeant’. You see this type in just about every war movie/novel ever, all the way from Kat in All Quiet on the Western Front. The Immortal Sergeant is good at combat. He’s at home there. He can’t quite fit in anywhere else, and he knows that. Because war is uncivilized, and once you get really good at crossing that line, you can’t really come back. Unlike a character like Rambo, the IS is not an isolated loner who can’t function in any society: he can function in his structured society. Why do most vets today try to make other vet friends?
I like both Furiosa and Ace, but I like them because they’re flawed. I think it’s a good reminder to everyone that hey YOU TOO are complicit in a system whose values might be systemically destructive of your agency, freedom, and self determination, which likewise ALSO participates in the oppression of other groups. YOUR SOCIETY TOO views you as less than human–your boss views you as a source of labor, and the drive in education toward ‘workforce development’ additionally institutionalizes the shift from ‘free human’ to ‘worker’ as the primary focus of education, your society too seeks to police and limit your sexuality and self-expression, (even tumblr where you MUST FIT INTO ONE OF THESE LABELS or else), and every place that takes your money views you as a mere consumer.
Saying that this is just something in his world, or that he’s doing the same damn thing you probably are…somehow makes him bad? WOW that’s really dangerous. That’s alterity to the point of self-annihilation.
Sorry for the posthumanist theory rant there at the end. Not really.
Thanks to both of you for offering interesting perspectives.
Going back to the OP, I wanted to offer a slightly different take on this part:
But when Furiosa betrays their system, the Ace takes her by the throat. This is not the action of a man who is good in the context of our world; this is the brutal action of a man who is good in the context of their world.
I think the Ace’s actions toward Furiosa, and in particular his last action toward her, are more complicated than that. Someone posted about this a while back; I apologize for having lost track of who it was. A lot of this is repeating that person’s previous comment.
Ace is loyal to Furiosa. He questions her three times (about diverting from the road, continuing despite the flares from the Citadel, and taking on the Buzzards rather than running them into their backup), and each time he accepts her evasive response at face value.
It’s only the last time he questions her, when the Buzzards have been defeated and she’s continuing to drive toward the dust storm, that he escalates. “Why can’t you stop?” When Furiosa doesn’t answer Ace is left with no possible explanation but the actual one: she’s betraying Joe. He shouts at her, “What have you done?” Again she doesn’t answer.
At this point, if Ace were merely “a brutal man who is good in the context of their world”, he could have incapacitated Furiosa. He could have punched her, or attacked her with some other weapon he presumably had access to. He could also have followed Nux’s shouted instructions to get out of the way, so he (Nux) could shoot her. He didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he continued to shield her from Nux while grabbing her by the throat and repeating his question, “What have you done?”
In the context of the kind of violence we’ve seen the war rig’s crew dishing out, I don’t think this constitutes an attack. Instead, it feels like a minimal escalation of force intended to compel her to answer. Ace still is motivated by his loyalty to Furiosa. He can’t let her continue unimpeded. But neither is he willing to attack her. Instead, he uses a minimally violent means to compel her to answer, while leaving himself open to the counter-attack that she actually makes.
It might have been me? I posted about Ace refusing to confront the obvious evidence that Furiosa had gone rogue on him, and that this is demonstrated by his question “Why can’t you stop?”.
I agree so much with what sentimental-mercenary said. It’s so easy to be swept away by Furiosa’s competence and her mission and the fact that she is running from the “bad guys” but she MUST have done terrible things in Joe’s name to rise to her rank. And her actions at the start of the film are motivated by feelings of revenge rather than nobility. She saves five women from captivity because they are Joe’s most valuable property. She sacrifices nearly 20 men who trusted her completely as their commander to do it.
The film shows us her tears. We are supposed to know she did something terrible.
“She saves five women from captivity because they are Joe’s most valuable property. She sacrifices nearly 20 men who trusted her completely as their commander to do it. The film shows us her tears. We are supposed to know she did something terrible.”
#let’s just save each other and casually share a meaningful glance aka WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME
Seriously, his face right here is killing me. They’re in the middle of a fight and Max just did an insane flying tackle while running down a moving vehicle to save her, but then Furiosa brakes for him and he takes this moment to stare at her like he can’t believe it. (I’m really trying to come up with an explanation that doesn’t sound
like it got filtered through my shipper goggles, but I can’t. He’s not
noticing Toast is gone – the eyeline is all wrong – and it could just
be a ‘we’re so fucked’ look, but he has to be visibly startled out of
looking at her by a guy attacking over the cab roof.)
On reflection, it’s a lot like the look Max gives Furiosa when she offers him a fully loaded bike.
We’ve talked a lot about how Max and Furiosa come to trust each other over the movie, but when was the last time someone protected him like that?
I’m biased for having read that the outright intention was to create a character (Furiosa) who is an equal to and in and of herself another Road Warrior–but it’s almost as if they look at each other and see themselves right there in the other.
“I’m me and I’m you. You’re you and you’re me. I’m you and you’re me and you’re me and I’m you. All at once.”
Also noticed on this go around the way he’s holding his left hand, it’s still wrapped up from when the steering wheel got harpooned. I love the consistency in this movie, how damage carries over.
I love that confused look on Max’s face, “you braked. you braked for me. Why. why. you keep moving. you need to keep moving.”
you need to keep moving:
Bonus: The War Boy who stabbed Furiosa managed to more easily climb back onto the Rig because she was braking to save Max.
So I thought this morning, maybe I was just nightblogging. Maybe it’s not the sort of the same expression he had during the my name is max scene.
Oh god no my heart. It kinda is? Still that confused concerned whyyyyyy. Ugh Tom Hardy do you even realize what your face is doing jfc of course you do, and so does Sixel.
Okay there’s more tho, that first gif, she’s looking over at the Vuvalini, they’re standing there watching their conversation and can you, CAN YOU, imagine how the conversation with these people she JUST got reacquainted with goes down maybe like:
Hey, so it’s been super long since I’ve met you but can you spare a bike for my bro here? Well we can haul the misplaced vuvalini on a trailer. He might… come with us? He did good, he’s good in a fight, he’s reliable.
#head in hands
Ugh. She talked to the Vuvalini and whatever she said had them agree to give him a bike. In this Wasteland? That’s so huge.
AND THE VUVALINI ARE RIGHT THERE WATCHING THE CONVERSATION.
So much awkward.
This scene slays me so incredibly hard. There’s something so formal and polite about the wording of her invitation to him that’s been absent from the dialogue thus far. As though they were living in a different time and she’s inviting him to a BBQ with her mates, and she doesn’t want him to feel like he’ll be crashing it. When actually HERE LET ME GIVE YOU SOMETHING TOTALLY VALUABLE THAT OTHER PEOPLE WOULD KILL FOR LIKE IT’S NOTHING.
*dies*
IT’S NOT EVEN HER THING TO GIVE. She had to ASK for it, and it’s clearly a big deal because
1) Miller would not have put the Vuvalini in that scene
Had SO MUCH FUN with this (even though I spent 1000 years on every wife and 10 minutes on everybody else.) Got some help and suggestions: sickmonkey1027 suggested Foxy Grandpa for Ace and gatsbygal suggested Joe in a Female Body Inspector shirt (which might be the sleaziest thing I’ve ever drawn, I feel the need to wash my tablet with soap) Also I think someone mentioned a “if lost, return to Slit” in the old post so I totally stole that idea for Cheedo.
Personal favorites are the two last one. For Max I couldn’t find ANYTHING and for Furiosa I found TOO MUCH (seriously, do you know how many horrendous trucker/asskicking novelty shirts there are out there? It’s kinda overwhelming) Then I googled “dog novelty t-shirt” AND GUESS WHAT POPPED UP ON THE FIRST PAGE. Same with Haul It Like You Stole It, when I laid my eyes on that beauty I just knew it was the one.
I love Dag and I want to talk about those boots. Like, did she steal them from a war boy before they left? I love how she clunks around in like they’re too big or she’s just not used to them, and I really enjoy how they make her motions and her body language non-sexual. She doesn’t look sexy, despite what she’s wearing, she looks gangly and a bit awkward and like she might not know for sure how to tear out your throat, but she’s willing to learn on the job
schwarmerei1 asked: Given your username...have you spotted a gifset for all the appearances of Furiosa's femur-topped gearshift knife? There ought to be one....
You’re entirely responsible for tonight’s rewatch btw. Anyone able and willing, feel free to snag these below.
Introduction:
Sandstorm:
Revealed as a knife when Max left to fix the pod:
In the fight against Nux:
With the Vuvalini, I think this is the only shot like this, with the knife centered in a two shot. Increasing suspicion that the bone was from Mary JoBassa:
Used to stab a War Boy:
Who used it to stab Furiosa:
Bonus, the knife Max used on Furiosa wasn’t bone-handled and it was the only time he used a knife:
Otherwise knives were used on him:
In the bottom fight, Max is swinging the boltcutters, which Furiosa used against him in their first fight. How’s that for a theme?
Reblogging this because–well, for one thing, bonehandledknife does awesome stuff–but also because I’m still not over how the femur-bone knife is such an awesome Chekhov’s Gun.
Max strips the cab of every last concealed weapon–sike he doesn’t!!
Furiosa reveals the knife. We know about it, she knows about it, the “wives” know about it, Max doesn’t know about it. The presumption here is that it could be used against Max. In any event, we now know about it and we’re waiting for it to be used, for the metaphorical gun to be fired. We’ve got characters in the know and characters ignorant. It’s going to be revealed to the ignorant characters sooner or later. That’s how it works.
But then who pops up through the floor of the cab like some kind of homicidal jack-in-the-box but Nux. The one weapon left in the cab, Furiosa puts the knife to him–a totally unexpected situation. (So, in other words, those characters who knew about the knife were ignorant of this other, well, weapon. Nice.) It’s even a little unexpected for the viewers, though we saw Nux catch up to the rig. (Nux is a bit of a Chekhov’s Gun here himself, isn’t he? He’s there–now what?) So at this point, having seen the knife put to someone’s throat, we figure, okay, we’ve seen it used. There we go. Wow, aren’t we glad they had it? Yes.
Weirdly, interestingly, and this may be the real clue, Max doesn’t seem to react to there being this bonus weapon in the cab (character development here too). But we’re all figuring, okay, there’s the knife, the knife has done its part.
WRONG. Because, although the knife has been brought out, it hasn’t really be put to use. In fact, it’s got two more moments.
Skipping ahead, blah blah, the knife rides along and we know about it, and we get to the fight with the Polecats on the return trip. Furiosa, in the course of the fight, uses it to stab a Polecat (see screencap above).
“Okay!” we all think, “Pointing it at Nux without using it was just part of the set-up, part of the revelation. This must be it’s Real Use. Now it’s been actually bloodied and used for its actual purpose–that is, as a weapon.” Kapow! we think. We have heard the gun fire.
But it’s not as simple as that–because, as zombie hunters will tell you, you don’t have to reload a knife.
Because what happens? Furiosa gets stabbed by the Polecat she just stabbed and with her own knife. Guns can have more than one bullet in them; a gun on stage can be fired twice.
And it feels, all at once, both unexpected and inevitable. It’s a terrible part of the fight, these Polecats climbing all over the rig, Toast is captured, chainsaws revving up. This is not the slick marksmanship and silent teamwork that made up the first fight in the canyon. This is up close and dirty and messy. It’s all close-quarters, blood, and guts. A stabbing–sure, makes sense in a fight like this.
It’s like a layer cake of true irony: revelation of knife, knife not used, knife used, knife used twice including on its keeper.
The final signature on the whole progress of the knife is Nux, the one who had the thing first pointed at him, setting it back in the gearshift again, setting in back in place. I just–I love the progression of the femur knife, okay? It’s not a “pure” Chekhov’s Gun, but it’s an interesting detail played out well.
Also, I am totally on board with the idea that the bone is from Mary JoBassa. That’s just twisted enough to work.
